Good News! Unemployment Claims Fell Last Week

According to the Labor Department, the number of people seeking unemployment benefits last week dropped by 8,000. Maybe the job market’s picking up?

Um, not quite.

Officials are chalking the drop to Hurricane Sandy and not only for last week but for three additional weeks. For instance, as per The New York Post, applications declined in one state as a result of power outages. This clearly made it challenging for officials to receive applications. Although the state wasn’t identified by the spokesperson, experts are anticipating anticipations to increase.

Maybe there’s good news to come overall since employers have added approximately 157,000 new jobs every month since January. And yes, the unemployment rate has dropped from 8.3 to 7.9 percent this year but some folks have stopped looking for work altogether and therefore, aren’t technically considered unemployed.

Not to continue with number crunching too much but we’ll throw one more stat in here for good measure. The unemployment rate rose in October to 7.9 from 7.8 in September mainly due to more Americans looking for employment. This could perhaps be attributed to their positive outlook on improving their shot at finding and landing a job.

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